by Trevor Shane
The room appeared to be in a shambles. The closet doors were all open. The bathroom door was open too, and the shower curtain was pulled back. The room appeared empty. The curtains were drawn. The only light in the room came from a small lamp sitting on the desk. The stranger closed the door behind him. “Can I get you something?” the stranger asked Christopher, stepping around him to get to the minibar.
“No, thanks,” Christopher answered.
“You sure?” the stranger asked again. “A water? An orange juice?”
“I’m fine,” Christopher said again. He didn’t want a drink. He wanted answers.
The stranger pulled a bottle of water out of the minibar for himself. “Okay, then let’s get started. Take a seat.” The stranger motioned to the plush chair across from the desk. Christopher sat down in it. The stranger sat at the desk. He began strumming his fingers on the desktop’s dark wood. “Where to start?” the stranger asked himself. He looked back up at Christopher and smiled slightly. “You know I do this. I convince people to come and talk to me and I tell them about what I can do for them, what we can do for them.” The stranger shook his head and smiled. “But I’ve never talked to anyone like you before.”
“What does that mean—someone like me? What did you mean when you said it was an honor to meet me?” Christopher asked. He had an endless list of questions running through his head, but these were as good a place to start as any.
The stranger started talking. He enunciated every word to avoid any more confusion than was necessary. “Your father was a soldier in a War that you’ve never heard of. He met your mother when she was very young. Your mother gave birth to you in contravention to the rules of your father’s War. Because of this, your mother decided that she couldn’t raise you herself. She thought you would be safer if she hid you with someone else, but hiding from the War is not that easy—especially in your case.” The stranger spoke the words as if he’d rehearsed them.
Christopher stared blankly at the stranger as if the stranger had just told him that the sky was bright red at nighttime. “What are you talking about?”
The stranger paused and then started back up again. “Your father was a soldier in a War that you’ve never heard of. He met your mother when she was very young. Your mother gave birth to you in contravention to the rules of your father’s War. Because of this, your mother decided that she couldn’t raise you herself. She thought you would be safer if she hid you with someone else, but hiding from the War is not that easy—especially in your case,” he repeated, word for word.
“My mother and father are back in Maine,” Christopher told the stranger. He knew the words were only partially true. He’d known it his whole life.
“I’m not going to argue with you about that,” the stranger said. “Instead, I’ll put it this way: your parents in Maine are actually your third mother and your third father. Your first father was killed when you were less than a month old. He was shot in the chest by his best friend. You were in the car with him at the time. His name was Joseph. The man who killed your first father took you away from the woman who gave birth to you and gave you to your second set of parents. You lived with them for less than a year before your birth mother found you again. She stole you back and gave you to your current parents because she was afraid.”
Christopher forced out a laugh, trying to pretend that he didn’t believe the stranger’s story. It was a weak bluff. “What was she afraid of?” Christopher asked.
“Who,” the stranger said curtly.
“Who what?”
“Who was she afraid of?” the stranger corrected Christopher.
“Okay, who was she afraid of?” Christopher asked on cue.
The stranger leaned in toward him. “Everyone,” he whispered. The word floated through the air toward Christopher. “When I said that I had never worked with anyone like you before, that’s what I meant. I usually deal with people born on one side of the War or another. They could stay in the War. It’s my job to convince them that it’s not worth it. I try to convince them that they can have a better life if they run away.”
“And me?” Christopher asked.
The stranger shook his head. “You have no side. You have nowhere safe to go. You’re as innocent and ignorant as your mother was when she met your father. Except—” The stranger stopped and stared at Christopher.
“Except what?”
“Except you’re not,” the stranger finished.
“Is any of this supposed to make sense to me?” Christopher asked.
“We think we know what’s in the safe-deposit box in the bank,” the stranger said to Christopher without answering his question.
Christopher’s hand nearly flinched toward his pocket, toward the key, but he controlled it. “How do you know so much about me?” he asked the stranger. The stranger ignored his question.
“We think it’s journals that your mother and your father kept. I can get them for you. Maybe they will help you understand.”
“Why don’t I just get them myself?”
“I told you before. They’ll kill you. The only thing they want more than whatever is in that safe-deposit box is your head on a stick.”
“Are you talking about the people that attacked me last night?”
The stranger smiled at Christopher. “Same make. Better model. They thought that you were a big problem with an easy solution. They underestimated you. They sent a couple of two-bit thugs after you. Don’t be a fool and think that they will underestimate you again. Ever.”
“So there are people here in Montreal looking for me?”
The stranger shook his head. “Waiting for you like a hunter watching a snare trap. Both sides of the War are here. But there are people everywhere looking for you. You’re the War’s most wanted man.”
“And you’re here to help me?”
“If I can. I think I can get into the bank. They’re not looking for me, and they know almost nothing about the safe-deposit box other than the location of the bank.”
Christopher thought about it for a second, unwilling to relinquish the key in his pocket just yet. “If you’re so eager to help me, how come there was no one there to help me last night?”
“That’s a fair question. We’d sent someone. We thought that sending more than one person would draw attention to you.”
“What happened to the person you sent?”
“We don’t expect to hear from him again. The men they sent after you were thugs, but they weren’t completely incompetent. Not everyone is blessed with your instincts.”
Christopher swallowed, not wanting to believe that someone he had never met had already died on his behalf. “Why are you helping me?”
“You wouldn’t understand, even if I tried to explain it to you. Not yet.” The stranger strummed his fingers on the desk. “All the answers are in that safe-deposit box. So will you give me the key to helping you understand?”
Christopher reached into his pocket and pulled out the key. It shined brightly in the dim light from the desk lamp. Christopher placed it on the desk in the middle of the small halo of light. “At the diner you said that it was an honor to meet me. Why?”
“Because flattery works better than you’d think,” the stranger said, lifting the key off of the desk. “And because you’re a legend,” he finished. Christopher felt a chill run down his spine. He didn’t feel like a legend. He felt like a frightened child.
The stranger returned to the hotel room a little over an hour later. Christopher had spent the hour trying to organize all of the new information that he’d learned in his brain. He checked his phone. He had four more texts from Evan. The last one read, “where are u? your mom is looking for u. i need info if u still want me to cover for u.” Christopher also had a worried voice mail from his mother. He didn’t have time to think about how the stranger was already putting his life o
n the line for him.
When the stranger returned, he had two tattered bound books with him—the one on the top more worn than the one below it. The books were filled with page after page of handwritten notes. The handwriting in the two books was different. The more worn book had sloppier handwriting. The handwriting in the other was neat, perfectly spaced, and slanted. On the top of the two books was a note. He began to read, barely able to breathe as he did so.
Christopher,
You need to know who you really are. You need to know where you come from. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fight Them if They come after you.
Love, always, Your Mother
Three
Addy pushed the Power button on her computer and the light from the screen cut through the room’s darkness. Her face glowed in the light, her skin appearing pale and soft, her light brown hair nearly glowing. She knew that she’d gotten the e-mail. She saw the e-mail come in on her phone during the day, but she didn’t dare click on the link, not with other people around who might see her do it. She couldn’t risk having someone see where the link embedded in the e-mail went. She was careful. She knew the game that she was playing. It was a game within a game within a game, but it was more than that. It was life versus death. Freedom versus paranoia. She opened up her e-mail. Before clicking on the link, she took a deep breath and listened. She knew she was alone in her apartment, but she also knew that you can never be too sure. She heard nothing and then she clicked on the link.
The site the e-mail linked to loaded almost instantly, being free of pictures, graphics, videos, animation, or any other bells and whistles. Addy felt her pulse quicken as her computer screen filled with words, nothing but words. She risked her life almost every day searching for people who were on the run from killers and yet her pulse quickened like this only when she opened up this Web page. The text on the page was dark green. The background was bright yellow. Those were the colors of the Uprising. The site wasn’t password protected. Anyone could get on it if they knew where to go. That wasn’t an easy task, though. The URL changed almost daily, like a code, from one random selection of twenty-two characters to another. The only way to know the URL on any given day was to receive an e-mail with a link. Addy had been getting the e-mails for nearly two years now. Someone had found her after she’d been talking to others in a chat room. The message they gave her then was simple. What you’re doing isn’t safe. Nothing is safe. This is safer. Then she started getting e-mails.
Something was different now. In all the time Addy’d been working at this site it had never been buzzing like this before. Even though what was talked about on the site had always felt real to Addy, now it felt somehow more real even if she didn’t know what that meant.
Addy scrolled down the page. The middle of the page was filled with long messages voted there by the page’s visitors. New messages appeared on the left-hand side of the page, ready to be read and voted on. Most messages would never be promoted to the page’s center. There was so much fluff, so much conjecture, so many rumors. You could only count on your own instincts to find the truth. On the right-hand side of the page were various discussion boards. Addy glanced over them, looking to see if anyone whose handle she recognized had posted anything recently. These people were Addy’s friends. Sometimes she felt like they were the only real friends she had. That’s because they were the same as her: young, frustrated, and angry at the older generations for failing to make the world any better and, in a lot of ways, making it worse. To Addy, it seemed as if nothing in the history of the War had ever changed and, worse, that nobody had ever really tried to change it. It wasn’t that she wasn’t appreciative of what Reggie had done for her, plucking her out of the War to work with the Underground. She simply didn’t believe that they were doing enough.
The site was alive. Addy could see it change as she watched, hitting Refresh over and over again. She didn’t recognize anyone on the discussion boards. Addy skipped over the new messages. They were coming quickly, a new one posted every few minutes. She went to the center of the page. A new message from Dutty had risen to the top. His posts always rose to the top, but they were coming much more frequently now. Every one of his messages made Addy’s hair stand on end.
Children of Paranoia,
Don’t be afraid. Fear is how they control you. They teach you that paranoia is your friend, that paranoia is the only thing keeping you alive. Even if those words ring true, ask yourself if a survival through paranoia is a survival worth clinging to.
They want you to be afraid because it’s the fear that keeps us apart. It’s the fear that separates us. It’s the fear that keeps us from talking to each other and realizing that the Emperor, while maybe not yet naked, is wearing tattered robes that are frayed at the edges and loose in the seams. Pulling one loose thread might not do anything, but if we all grab a thread and pull at the same time, those threads will unravel.
I know that some of you are itching for a call to action. I know that you’re eager to stop what you’re doing, to stop fighting, to stop running, to stop hiding, to stop hiding others. All I can say is “Soon.” For now, you can only do one thing to help the revolution: stop being afraid.
As always without fear,
Dutty
Addy felt a chill run down her spine as she read the post. When Dutty wrote that people were eager to stop hiding others and to act, it was like he was speaking directly to her, like he knew about the work she’d been doing with the Underground. Addy had decided to stop being afraid years ago, though. Now she was merely waiting, trying to figure out what role she might play in the big things that she was sure were coming. Addy looked at Dutty’s words, trying to find some specific meaning for her, trying to find a direction in them, even though she knew that there was no secret message for her in the words. Addy was unsure of what she could possibly have to offer the Uprising. She was only twenty-two years old. She’d run from the War when she was nineteen, when Reggie personally recruited her into the Underground. She’d been helping to hide people since she was twenty, but she was still green and raw. Before she ran away, Addy only had a desk job in the War, and an entry-level one at that. She had one kill under her belt—during a botched pickup for the Underground. The man they were trying to pick up had been followed. She barely remembered killing the man who had followed him. She’d read rumors that Dutton was only twenty-six. Maybe changing the world was a young person’s game.
It was Dutty’s third post that week. Already, multiple conversations had broken out on the sidebar about what it all meant, especially about what Dutty meant when he said “soon.” Addy skimmed a few of the conversations. The sidebars were so full of rumors that Addy never bothered to spend too much time on them. Tonight, new comments popped up by the second. Addy had never seen the message boards this alive before. Her eyes could barely keep up. She scanned the stories. Almost all of them were about the Child. Conversations were raging about how he had turned eighteen. Addy knew that a lot of people had been waiting for this day for years, though she didn’t understand what they expected to happen. The rumors ran rampant in front of her. Arguments erupted about what had happened to the Child. One camp of people claimed that both sides had sent people to recruit him to their side. Offshoots of that camp argued over which side he would join and why. Other people restated rumors that the two sides had both sent people to kill him. Some even went so far as to say that the two sides had joined forces to try to rid themselves of the troublesome boy forever. Then those people who believed that the Child was being hunted went on to argue about whether he was currently dead or alive.
It had been a long time since Addy had paid much attention to the stories about the Child. She had listened to them when she was a kid, but she worried that people were putting too much faith in fairy tales. She worried about what would happen to the Uprising when the Child, if he was even real, turned out to be one big disappointment. The contingent on the mes
sage boards who argued that he must already be dead pointed out the unassailable fact that he was essentially an innocent who had little chance in a fight against real soldiers. More than a few suggested that he’d be dead before he even knew why. Addy didn’t want to agree with them, but she did. What chance did the Child have? She wanted desperately for everyone to stop searching for a savior and just get up and fight. But she kept reading. She read the messages by the people who believed that Christopher was alive for no other reason than because they wanted to believe it, because that belief gave them hope. Soon the messages were popping up faster than Addy could read them. She began to feel overwhelmed. For the first time in over an hour, she took her eyes off the computer screen and stared into the emptiness of her room. Then she closed her Web browser.
Addy hit a button, completely wiping her hard drive of every potentially personalizing keystroke and cookie. It took a couple of minutes before the computer was clean. She wiped the computer before turning it off every time. You couldn’t be too careful. Then she powered off. A second later, the screen went dark and her room went completely dark with it. Addy sighed and stood up to get ready for bed. She went to sleep that night trying to focus on Dutty’s message. The problem was, no matter how hard she tried, her brain kept coming back to a question that was posted in one of the chains about the Child. If Christopher is alive, where is he now?
Four
Christopher was in the passenger seat of the car, heading south. The only thing slowing them down was the rain. Max, the stranger, was driving. Christopher was asleep, his head bouncing lightly against the passenger-side window. Christopher had spent two full days and nights in the hotel room in Montreal. He barely slept. Max stayed with him, leaving only periodically to pick up food. Max refused to use room service. He didn’t trust it. Holed up in the room with Max, Christopher eventually asked the stranger, “Who are you?”
